TORTURE EDITORIAL AND RESPONSE RESTATED

The Deseret News published my letter to the editor on 23 April, but it turns out they cut the text considerably from what I intended.

Here, in its entirety, is the editorial I had in mind. I have done a little editing in this version, but this version remains mostly what I had in mind:


THE ORIGINAL DOCUMENT

I hope the Justice Department and courts will indict, try, and sentence CIA and FBI agents who tortured our enemies.

Typically people justify these acts by either rationalizing it got good results or everyone else does it.

It is preposterous to say that we should not prosecute people who were merely following orders and did not know better. They knew what they were doing. People torture for the sexual thrill of it. In history, we did not decide to not prosecute the workers of the holocaust simply because they were following orders. These people did immoral acts against fellow human beings. Punishment followed.

If my teenage child told me that he or she did some outrageous violent act on a teenage child because other teenagers did it and because it achieved good results, I would probably ground that child until he was 35. We should not be swayed by the same sort of preposterous logic.

Attorneys and judges who ruled that the USA could torture our enemies gave bad advise. However, their opinions -- while idiotic -- were abstractions. The federal agents, CIA operatives, and soldiers who did the torturing should be removed and punished. If they think they can get away with torturing with impunity our enemies because they are our enemies, soon they will torture ordinary American citizens for sport. Torture is a sexual thrill, not a technique. The USA should avoid it on principle.


ASIDE -- Why does Cheney publicly defend "harsh interegation," not Bush? Why exactly does Cheney livie in Virginia and publicly stick his nose into this controversy with his defensive defensiveness?

We should exile Bush, Cheney and Rumsfeld to Elba.

This wasn't about security. It was some sort of perverse excitement.


COMMENTARY ON COMMENTARY

My truncated letter generated 49 responses in Deseret News on-line edition. The very next day, the Deseret News printed a letter in response justifying torture. This means that the writer interrupted his daily routine to bang out the letter and email it. That letter generated 110 responses in the on-line Deseret News.

For the record, let me note that a standard rationalization for both torturing and justifying torture states we have to resort to it if a terrorist has planted an atomic bomb or some other dangerous device in a crowded place, and it will wreak havoc in just a few minutes.

First, the odds of this sort of situation happening to us individually remain, thank heaven, remote.

Second, the use of nagging, crying, begging, bribing, and guilt work as well. They don't get our hands dirty or bloody, either.


RIGHT ASCENSION'S MAIN POINT

If we allow federal militaries to torture with impunity, it will not be long before local police will torture with impunity as well. The half life of a bad example lasts forever, especially if it involves the sexual thrills of dominance and pain.